Ann Coulter is a significant figure in the so-called "conservative movement." She may be extreme, but she is hardly on the fringe. Her books have appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list. But look, if you dare, at who she is:
Whether she is correct or not--and I don't actually fucking care--her statement here betrays--again! Yet again!--that the Republican Party, its leaders, and its supporters do not believe that I am an American. You have friends and family who are the children of immigrants, and I have always held that this is the greatest fact of this nation--that we trace no common ancestry, that we hold no illusions about what makes us one. And Coulter and Kirk, Trump and Pence, Rubio and Ryan, Priebus, McConnell, Perry, Cruz--several of these the children and grandchildren of immigrants themselves!--reject an inclusive nationalism in favor of the exclusionary ethnic nationalism that ruined Europe last century and threatens to break it again.
America is not an ethnic nation-state. America will never be and cannot be an ethnic nation-state because to be so would destroy the very essence of America, and if the "leaders" of the Republican Party cannot recognize this, well, then this is why their Party, for the good of the Republic, must be destroyed.
What, then, is America? Let me turn John Steinbeck to answer this. On my copy of "East of Eden," this is on page 568:
"We're a violent people, Cal. Does it seem strange to you that I include myself? Maybe it's true that we are all descended from the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers and brawlers, but also from the brave and independent and generous. If our ancestors had not been that, they would have stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil. ... That's why I include myself. We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left. All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed--selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful--we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We're mundane and materialistic--and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals. We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? That's what we are, Cal--all of us. You aren't very different."
... On the off-chance that people haven't noticed, I will be voting for Hillary Clinton today, and I will be voting straight-ticket Democrat, because to give a single vote to a single Republican candidate this election cycle is to say that I accept my exclusion from the nation, is to say that I accept the slandering of my parents and grandparents, of my aunts and uncles, of my friends and family and of my neighbors.
It is to say that I do not fear the threat of the völkish nationalists at the door, that I do not hear their words, that I do not mark their racism and misogyny, that I do not see their foul stew of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and a thousand other hates that I have not the time to name.
In short, this is a choice. To somewhat paraphrase a holy book of several religions that are not mine (for the only religion I know is to be an American, with all that that means): it may be that America has done not well, but then this must be why sin lieth at the door. And unto us is its desire, and we may, if we so choose, rule over it.
